Native Americans Refuse to Sign SettlementReporter John O'Brien interviews three Native Americans, Ronald Jones Jr., Roberta Bucktooth, and Andrew Jones, all of the Onondaga Nation. The Joneses are refusing to sign the proposed $3 million settlement of the lawsuit against the state over the 1997 protest and arrests alongside Interstate 81. Bucktooth signed the settlement.

Syracuse, NY -- A proposed $3 million settlement of a lawsuit against New York state troopers appears to be dead because about a dozen Native American plaintiffs refuse to sign.

The state agreed to pay that amount to 98 people who say state police wrongfully arrested them, beat them or chased them off their own property in breaking up a tax protest along Interstate-81 in 1997.

All but about a dozen of the plaintiffs have signed since the state made the offer in May, according to lawyer Terrance Hoffmann, who represents half of them.

The others say they won’t be satisfied unless the case goes to trial.

The leader among the holdouts is Andrew Jones, a 50-year-old Onondaga who says he suffered a leg injury when he was running away from troopers in the conflict on May 18, 1997. Under the proposed settlement, Jones would get $65,000 for a torn ligament that he says still causes him pain.

One of his main beefs: the state’s lawyers forced the Native Americans into a low settlement because the lawyers knew the federal judge in the case, Frederick Scullin, is a former state trooper.

“Because he’s a former state trooper, that’s why he won’t let things happen” to the state police, Jones said this week.

Jones said Scullin has already issued rulings against the Native Americans as the case has progressed.

But Jones is wrong. Scullin was never a state trooper.

“I don’t know where he got that,” said Hoffmann, who represents Jones’ relatives but not Andrew Jones.

Jones is also wrong that Scullin has ruled in favor of the state police, Hoffmann said.

The case has mostly been heard by a federal magistrate, but Scullin did issue a decision on the state’s request to grant the troopers qualified immunity. Scullin ruled in the Native Americans’ favor – that troopers weren’t immune from the lawsuit.

Jones said his lawyer had told him Scullin was an ex-trooper and that that’s why the settlement was necessary. The lawyer, Robert Anello of New York City, refused to comment.

The plaintiffs accused troopers of using excessive force and of overstepping their bounds by breaking up a peaceful protest on sovereign Onondaga Nation territory next to Interstate 81. The suit said the troopers then covered up their misconduct.

The Native Americans, many who were not Onondagas, were protesting a proposed cigarette tax agreement negotiated by Onondaga Nation chiefs and state officials.

After the clash, a state police staff inspector who was heading an internal affairs investigation said he was removed from the assignment because he was too aggressive in his questioning of the commanding officers. The staff inspector’s decision to contact the plaintiffs’ lawyers nine years later was a key to getting the state to settle, Hoffmann said.

But without all of the plaintiffs signing, the settlement’s dead, Hoffmann said.

“The state is taking the position that they won’t settle with any plaintiffs unless all the plaintiffs agree to the settlement,” he said. “I’m not arguing with their position.”

A spokeswoman for the state Attorney General’s Office would not comment.

That means the case will go to trial, probably sometime in the spring, Hoffmann said.

Jones gave different answers this week when a reporter asked him how much he would settle for. At first, he said each of the 98 plaintiffs should get $3 million. Later, he said a white plaintiff who was attacked by police in a church would probably get $1 million, so each of the plaintiffs deserves that much.

The Native Americans were holding a religious ceremony alongside the highway when troopers moved in, Jones said.

Jones also said no amount of money would satisfy him, that he wanted the case to go to trial. It would resolve not only the claims in the lawsuit, but longstanding complaints from dissident Onondagas about leaders of their tribe, he said.

A trial could even address the 1999 death of his father, Ronald Jones Sr., Andrew Jones said. The death was ruled a homicide, but no one was ever charged.

Could Jones’ claims about leadership issues with the Onondagas or his father’s death be addressed in a trial over the 1997 state police conflict?

“It can’t,” Hoffmann said. “It’s not going to be.”

Andrew Jones’ brother, Ronald Jones Jr., said he suffered a broken back in the 1997 conflict with state troopers. He’d get $40,000 under the proposed settlement.

“They broke my back that day and they want to give me $40,000 for a broken back,” he said. “It’s like my brother stated, there’s no law here.”